Interesting point. Proofgrade™ will take the guesswork out.
Looking forward to that!
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How does the 3D engrave option differ from “engrave depth/power by shade of gray”, both in terms of what the hardware does and what the engraving looks like?
Presumably it also focuses at different levels rather than just changing the power.
I cant answer that question with full certainty, because I dont have 3d engrave available in my software right now, but essentially its just a grayscale engrave that theyve already figured out the settings for you.
The glowforge 3d engraved token they posted took 2 passes to get to the wanted depth. Im assuming if you set the power max very high, and the speed very low using manual settings it would achieve the same result. They might be varying power and speed based on which pass it is (and whether or not you have a pro, and what material), so I cant tell you what that might be, but you can tell it to do passes at whatever settings you want.
I think I mentioned this before, but it might be possible to do a lower power fast engrave as the last one in the series to just clear off the surface of charred material. @karaelena sent me a video recently of a wood test from another laser manufacturer and they said they use this technique to clean things up at the end. Ill see if I can find it and post it.
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That sounds very intriguing, looking forward to your testing!
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NICE!
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So until the official GF 3D engrave is available, we, in theory, should be able to approximate the same thing by deciding how many passes to do and what maximum power each pass should be done at. As is, the GF is now capable of varying power according to gray scale of each “pixel” in the file?
Sorry if I’m being dense - I don’t do distance learning well.
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You arent being dense, because that sounds exactly right. That is what is occurring on a single engrave basis, so I will just need to do a few passes and see what happens. @Rita was kind enough to send me some recommended power levels and speeds, so I have a great jumping off point!
Luckily I happen to have a bunch of maple slabs sitting around leftover from another project. Sounds like those are the best thing to use! Game on!
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Me too! GF#1 will be out of town for a couple of days, so I’ll have plenty of alone time with GF#2 =).
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Thanks for the explanation. The functional concepts behind 3D engraving have been bugging me for a while but it’s starting to make sense.
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I just had a scary thought… As you said, they’ve already figured out the settings. Does that mean one won’t be able to 3D engrave non-Proofgrade materials?
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Nah we can 3d engrave. We just need to manually set the speed and power. Ive been testing 3d engraves all night as a matter of fact. On non-proofgrade material…
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Thanks for that!
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Have you done images engraving, or just text and line drawings? I have a sheet of that from laserbits, saving it for GF(don’t want to wste it on my K40).
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How have you been going about (if you have been) cleaning up the engrave. That trotec video mentioned the clean up , but not the method. Have you tried any of the chemical ( vinegar, orange hand cleaner, etc)methods to clean up the black?
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Two names for the same thing. The actual implementation is a little more complicated than just varying power, though.
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I asked the FSL people if the Muse did 3D gray map engraves. They said it does, by running multiple constant power passes according to the levels of gray. It appears that the Forge does it more intelligently than that.
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